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Whimsical Walk

Whimsical Walk

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The suburb of Reston, Virginia, is made for walking. Trails wind from neighborhood to neighborhood. Founder Robert E. Simon (the “RES” in Reston) designed the suburb for living and working. The trails connect the two.

Yesterday I strolled from Reston’s earliest “downtown,” Lake Anne, to its newest, Reston Town Center.  I’d never taken this path before, though I’d skirted quite close to it through the years. 

Along the way, I passed Hickory Cluster, a midcentury modern townhome development with big windows and geometric lines created in the 1960s by architect Charles Goodman. There were impromptu conversations in the community forest, one woman with a pair of corgis, another with a fluffy golden retriever. 

I passed a small giveaway library and the charming little scene above. The whimsy suited the place, looked perfectly at home among the woodland paths and the open common. I slowed my pace because I didn’t want this walk to end.

Lenten Rose

Lenten Rose

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A walk through Georgetown before class last evening renewed my hankering for Lenten roses. What creamy beauties they are, how full-bodied compared with their early spring cousins the snowdrop and winter aconite. I’ve wanted to plant Lenten roses (also known as hellebores) for years, but now I’m on a mission. 

Of course, last night I was being swayed by the excellent company the plants were keeping, by the environment in which I spotted them. A late winter afternoon, sun slanting low over cobblestones, grand houses standing guard over a neighborhood I could walk through for hours and never tire of.

Even a dandelion would look good in that setting. 

Mall By Myself

Mall By Myself

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Yesterday, I was a walker in the city, not the suburbs. I began at 18th and L, deep in the business district. But that’s not where I stayed.

The Mall was my destination, heading toward the Capitol and my former walking route, site of numerous lunchtime strolls.

The monuments were there, glinting in a warm winter sun. The White House, the Washington Monument, the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries building.

What was missing, what always seems to be missing these days, was the people. Empty thoroughfares make good straightaways, but what I would give if this scene were clogged with tourists and pickup soccer games and pale office workers out for a noontime jog.

Georgetown Gazetteer

Georgetown Gazetteer

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Tomorrow, my humanities class moves from online to in-person, so I’ll drive to Georgetown again, as I was doing last fall.  I’m looking forward to meeting classmates in person, though of course there will be the nervousness of any new venture. 

I took a trial run of sorts on Friday when I visited campus for a required Covid test. That was accomplished in minutes, which left plenty of time for a stroll around campus and through the neighborhood.

Flurries were flying as I walked the brick sidewalks and dreamed myself into the Federal townhouses. There was the buff pink with dark green shutters, a stately corner manse, a teal-shuttered beauty with the view of Georgetown Visitation. 

It’s a tough choice … but I’ll take one of those mansions on Prospect, one with a river view, please. 

Monochromatic

Monochromatic

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It was just above freezing yesterday when I set off through the woods down a path that leads to our sister neighborhood on Westwood Hills Drive. I had walked there a couple weeks ago and admired the forest views, the courts and cul-de-sacs, the feeling of being on the other side of the looking glass. But I’d driven to that walk. This one was solely by shank’s mare. 

Finding new ways to escape the neighborhood on foot is becoming a minor obsession. I enjoy the great suburban irony — driving to walk — but still like to subvert it whenever possible.

Yesterday’s walk was a pleasing mix of sedate street and woodland trail. The ground was thawing in the latter and mud was a factor (my shoes were banished to the garage after the stroll). But I plunged on, making a large loop through the still, spare, monochromatic landscape. 

Wind-Whipped Walk

Wind-Whipped Walk

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On Friday, ahead of what I’d heard would be a snow-stormy weekend, I took a brisk walk around Lake Audubon. Well, not exactly around, but as far as I could go. 

The wind had already picked up, and it was moving across the lake, creating patches of sunlight on the water that glimmered and moved with the wind.

I was wearing my warm black parka with the faux-fur-lined hood, which kept me warm but hampered movement, so I wasn’t skittering ahead as quickly as I usually do. But I was comfortable and meditative and feeling energized by the wind in my face. 

These are the moments that gladden the lives of walkers everywhere — or at least this one. 

For Mayfield

For Mayfield

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I heard about Kentucky when good friends wrote to ask if my brother was OK. I checked the news then and learned of the horrible tornadoes that ripped through the country’s midsection. So this post is a lament: it’s a cry of solidarity for the residents of Mayfield, Kentucky, a town I’m embarrassed to say I had never heard of until Saturday, native Kentuckian that I am. 

At first, I thought it was Maysville that had been hit, a river town near where some of Dad’s kin were born. But no, it was, as I often say about Kentucky towns whose names I don’t recognize, “in the western part of the state.” And it truly is there, close to both Tennessee and Missouri, more midwestern than southern. Dawson Springs is there, too—another town hit by the deadly twisters. 

I keep thinking about the folks in the candle factory, perhaps some of them working an extra shift since it’s Christmas time and they could use the money. I think about the malls where those candles might be sold. Do we need those candles? Not really, but yes, because the residents of Mayfield need those jobs. 

It could have been any kind of factory, though. And it could have been any place. But it was in Kentucky, so my heart is even heavier. 

(Dark clouds outside of Nicholasville, from my August trip to Kentucky)

The Concert

The Concert

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It had been a while since I sat in a concert hall. There was Wolftrap last summer, always fun, but open-air, even when you have seats. 

Last night was the whole experience: the Kennedy Center itself, the approach and the entry, picking up the tickets, walking down the long hall, and then, in the hall, the chandeliers above and instruments tuning below. There were the black ties and tails, a hush when the lights went down. 

And then, there was this young man with a clarinet, swaying with it, bending with it, reminding me of James Galway on the flute, that same elfin charm.

The clarinetist, Lin Ma, played the Mozart Clarinet Concerto as if he was born to do it, so softly in parts of the Adagio that I felt myself lean toward the stage in order to hear it better. When he finished, the audience leapt to their feet.

Last night’s concert was not only all Mozart; it was all late-vintage Mozart, every piece written in 1791, the last year of the composer’s short life. And it ended with this: bliss. 

Coming Home

Coming Home

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When you live somewhere a long time, as we have, you become settled. Even in a place that I originally feared was placeless, you find the firm ground, the sticking places. You join a book group that people leave only when they move out of town — and even then, some of these people return and rejoin.

Yesterday, I became a “re-joiner” too, meeting once again with a writer’s group that welcomed me eight years ago but which full-time job, family responsibilities and logistics (this is a Maryland group and I live in Virginia) made impossible.

Now the full-time job has fallen away and the family responsibilities have lessened, and there I was yesterday entering yet another funky old Italian restaurant a few blocks away from the one where we met years ago. 

Once again, there was the company of writers. It felt like coming home. 

Scott Hotel

Scott Hotel

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Only time for a short walk yesterday, but I had a destination in mind: the Scott Hotel, once owned by my grandfather and great uncle. Mom and her family lived at the hotel intermittently through the years, sharing quarters with the horsemen and the tobacco farmers in to sell their crops. 

The hotel was right across from the Southern Railway Depot, a natural place to stay for a night or two if you were in Lexington on business.

It was a less likely place to house three young daughters and a son. But these were different times, harder in some ways, easier in others.

The hotel is abandoned now, has been for years. It stands in mute testimony to those long-ago lives.